The Last War
by Andromeda-To-The-Demitria
Summary: I hate myself for loving the taste of his kiss again. It is all illegal for me, but maybe that is why it is so tempting. His body against mine just feels so right, and I realize that I never stopped loving him. I also realize that for the second time in my life, the gods have messed with my mind, letting the mist alter my memories. He never cheated on me, I know that now.


The moment I see his blonde hair, I know I shouldn't have come.

The all too familiar features on his face blind me with sadness. His blue eyes, the ones that connect him to his sister. Or once connected him, anyway. Now, it doesn't matter. His sister died long ago in the war. His short blonde hair that I used to run my fingers through when we kissed is still the same short hair.

But most of all, I realize that I had missed the scar. The scar on the edge of his mouth, the only battle scar of his fight with the stapler when he was a toddler. I remember teasing him about it, and we'd laugh, and I'd kiss it.

It was stupid of me to come so close to his home. My hunting instincts that I've acquired over my years of being a Hunter told me against it, but my mind said it was okay.

And now, I'm face to face with the man I turned my back on.

_Once, there was a girl. She fell in love with a boy._

But isn't that how all fairy tales begin? The difference is that now I know my life isn't part of a fairy tale. It's real life. Or as real as life can get with the living gods of Greece and Rome.

_He didn't remember her. He didn't remember the kiss on the roof, how they had met, or anything special between them. He didn't even remember his last name. _

I stare into his blue eyes for a minute, just to see if he's forgotten again. But he hasn't. I can tell, just by the flicker of recognition behind his eyes.

_He didn't remember her, but that didn't stop him from saving her from plummeting to her death down the Grand Canyon. Together, with another boy, the third wheel, they traveled to a different world, though they hadn't left Earth. _

_It was a camp for children of the gods. It was there that she learned that everything she had had with the boy was fake, a trick of the mist. She was devastated, but determined, to make it count this time. To make what she and the boy had real. _

I smile a bitter and fake smile. It feels foreign, but it's enough to snap him out of the initial shock of seeing me, his ex-girlfriend. I slowly move my hand near my cursed dagger, but don't make it too obvious.

"Jason," I curtly say as if all we have ever been was just mere acquaintances.

I can see his _gladius_ strapped to his side, but unlike me, his hand makes no movement towards it. "P-Piper?" he chokes out.

_They go on a deadly quest to save the goddess Hera, and succeed. But they do not realize that it is not the end. Gaea was rising, and they, the third wheel, and four more were forced to go to the ancient lands to stop her. But half of them die and are left to the Underworld. _

_It was then that the relationship between the girl and the boy was made real. But it was also tested, sawing away at every weak end they shared. They were enemies in blood, she a Greek, and he a Roman. But they couldn't see that, too blinded by love to care. _

_And once the war is over, things do not suddenly become peaceful between the two. _

I nod, but still keep my air of superiority. After all, I am the Lieutenant of Artemis. Forever sixteen, but forever forbidden to men. Especially men who used to be the object of my most intimate love.

I don't even know this man anymore. He is about twenty now, but the faded stress marks have left him older. It doesn't make him any less attractive in my forbidden thoughts, however.

And then, he does something that I wouldn't ever have anticipated.

He kisses me.

_The gods become restless and irritated. The two camps cannot combine. Not because of the demigods themselves, but because the gods cannot chose a version of themselves. While one demigod sees them in Roman, another sees Greek, causing the gods great pain. _

_So they come up with a plan. A plan to purposely divide the demigods once more. So they call for a quest. A fake, worthless one, but a quest nonetheless. _

_And he goes on the quest, ordered to as leader of Camp Jupiter. The girl is left behind, worried to death. _

_The worrying pays off in all the wrong ways, because he never returns to her. _

I hate myself for loving the taste of his kiss again. It is all illegal for me, but maybe that is why it is so tempting. His body against mine just feels so right, and I realize that I never stopped loving him.

I also realize that for the second time in my life, the gods have messed with my mind, letting the mist alter my memories. He never cheated on me, I know that now.

The gods cheated me of him. For their own personal benefits. I grow angry at my traitorous godly side of the family, so I kiss him more.

He doesn't mind.

_She goes crazy at his absence through death. If she was obsessive of the boy before, it is nothing compared to how she feels now. She sees his face in everything. Nightmares bring all the possible ways he died, and implant fears into her mind. _

_And she starts to paint. But the only thing she paints is him. Hundreds, thousands, millions of pictures of him. _

_Her frustration and hate against the gods begins to boil. It's overwhelming, and she starts to plot ways to overthrow them. She hates them with every ounce of her being, especially her own mother, the goddess of love. _

_Aphrodite used her as an example. An example that she doesn't favor the love lives of her children. That she will not save her own daughter's love. _

_The girl is tired of being a pawn._

"Piper, I thought I'd never see you again. I don't remember what even happened between us. At first, I remembered kissing some other girl, and the look of hurt on your face. But the older the memory got, the less real it seemed," he tells me after we're done kissing.

I feel the turmoil moving in my head as I try to once again sort through the authentic and artificial memories. "I know now how you felt, back when Hera took your memories," I say in a joking voice.

He laughs, but it's not in humor. "Why did they do this to us?"

They, being the gods. I, for once, cannot answer. My persuasive tongue that always says the right words to make things go well has frozen, leaving me abandoned.

For now, my relationship with Jason cannot be fixed. I am unattainable, bound to an oath. We will not get our happy ending, just as Percy and Annabeth did not get.

Because the gods are scared of their children becoming too strong. Too understanding of all the pain they have caused us, so much that we will overthrow them and put them in extinction.

And I know now why Jason and I were separated, our heads filled with fake memories of betrayal, leading to my rank as an unattainable Lieutenant of Artemis.

But they don't know that all they've done has just made things worse for them.

_The girl is confused now. She can't remember anything after the war except for a few foggy memories. One especially. _

_One with him cheating on her with a faceless girl. She doesn't recall this girl, but it doesn't matter. He left her. _

_Something doesn't seem right though. A thought flickers across her head that he was supposed to be dead. Lost during a quest. But immediately after the though appears, it is wiped away. _

_So she leaves him and gives him a taste of his own medicine. A voice tells her to become a Hunter of Artemis because it is what is best for her. At the time, it seems to be a good idea, so she follows through with it. _

_Things are okay, for a while. But then things start to flood back. Rumors are heard, and things are seen. She is told that he is still alive, which doesn't make sense for some reason, because previous memories are no longer matching up. _

_In her dreams, things are right. And she comes to understand that the dreams aren't dreams, they are the true memories seeping through. _

_Because Jason never died during a quest, he was taken away from her and separated from the Greeks. And he never cheated on her. _

I don't let go of his hand. I no longer care about some stupid oath I was tricked into saying, because in my mind, I never meant it. I love him, I always have. And he loves me too.

So when Jason asks me, "What now?"

I say, "We start an uprising, and put the gods in their rightful place."

And I love when he kisses me in approval.

* * *

**Man, I'm on a roll with all these one-shot ideas I'm having lately! This wasn't originally planned to end in a sort of happy way, but as I went along I decided that I needed the plot to be thicker. Besides, why would I break up my OTP?**

**Anyways, I don't own anything and blah, blah, blah. **

**Thank you for all your support, it means the world to me!**


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